Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell has become a major voice in the “gamification” debate that has raged in the game design community for the last year. His “Design Outside the Box” talk two years ago on the layering of games on every aspect of human existence became a big hit. We talk to Schell
Petri “Pete” Purho has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. But the Finnish magician and game designer isn’t interested in run-of-the-mill party tricks. Dennis Kogel explains how Purho’s games are built on a foundation of cards.
In the final installment of this four-part series, Joseph Bernstein attempts to deal with review scores in the age of Metacritic. When did fun factor stop being a factor, and why is it so depressing to argue with numbers?
What does an avant-classical composer have to do with a game about dismembering creatures in space? In our first monthly column on sound, David Raposa explores Dead Space‘s debt to one of the 20th century’s great musicians.
The Game With a Hat is more than just an amalgam of other party games. It’s a game about getting closer to people—maybe in more ways than one. Simon Ferrari takes us through the intricacies of this guessing game, best played on a rainy farm.
What does our behavior as gamers tell us about our own sense of morality? Do the ethics we demonstrate in real life cross over into our in-game personas—and vice versa? Dustin Locke takes us through some of the philosophy behind game ethics, and what it means to be a skeptic, knave and psychopath.
More than five years ago, something strange happened in World of Warcraft. A spell gone awry known as “Corrupted Blood” ravaged the millions of players, leaving behind death, mayhem, and fear. That’s where Rutgers epidemiologist Nina Fefferman stepped in, and that’s where the story gets interesting.
Researcher Nicolas Nova thinks a lot about game controllers. Especially as design objects. What do videogame controllers tell us about technological evolution? What does the future holds for the modest controller? And which controllers stand out as ‘paragons’ of design? In this interview, Nova addr
Joseph Bernstein describes the daily grind of interning for a major videogame website. In part two of this four-part series, he waits for the server to catch up, contemplates the passage of time, finds relief in unexpected outlets, and waits some more.
For Jon Irwin, the futuristic 3DS is a blast to the past. Irwin takes a look at Nintendo’s history and its tradition of putting gameplay in unusual places—and feels the blissful nostalgia of making the 3DS Mii Maker logo spin with a puff of breath.
Joseph Bernstein spent one autumn as a videogame intern at GamesRadar. Part one of a four part series, his perilous encounter with the strange world of videogame previews in which he learns that all is not as it seems to be behind closed doors.
Do videogames count as design objects? NYU sociologist Harvey Molotch certainly thinks so as we are prone to think of videogames as another form of entertainment. But much like videogames, design faces the same problems of anonymity, disrespect, and cultural bias. However, design is now ascendant a
Pop artist Jeff Koons has drawn criticism and praise in equal doses over the life of his career, but a Florida art student has decided to express his opinion in a different way—by blowing Koons’ work to pieces. Hunter Jonakin created “Jeff Koons Must Die!” for his MFA thesis show as a first-person s
Think games are smart now? MyCyberTwin’s John Zakos and his business partner Liesl Capper-Beilby are hoping to bring their moldable AI clay to everything from massively multiplayer games to microwaves. Will AI in games be too smart for its own good?
Timothy Leary isn’t remembered for his contributions to videogames. The controversial pop theorist’s body of work consists of exactly one game and a handful of prototypes. For Leary, the trouble with making finished products was a matter of self-restraint. Leary had lofty ideas about the role and fu
The “games as art” debate has fortunately waned a bit. Good riddance, I say. But a broader interest in videogames as a visual, interactive medium is certainly welcome. At least, that’s how John Sharp, who teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design, is approaching games. For the last year or s
For more than 20 years, Jayne Gackenbach has been doing research into the depths of our sleeping subconscious as a dream researcher. Over the past decade, the professor of psychology at Edmonton’s Grant MacEwan University has become increasingly interested in the world of videogames after watching h
Helen calls them the “Hurrah!” buttons. L2 + R2 + both analog sticks held upwards. Whenever she wins the most points on a LittleBigPlanet level, she presses these buttons, and her grinning Sackgirl lifts both arms in the air in wordless celebration. My Sackboy, meanwhile, tends to scowl and storm of
Our friends over at Paste posted a bunch of photos of Tim Schafer that were taken by Brian Taylor at last week’s Game Developers Choice Awards. Since Schafer is the funnyman-in-chief at Double Fine and responsible for games like Brütal Legend, Grim Fandango, and others, we figured he would be open t
Games teach us, and they change us – but only if they get close to us. Welcome to “Intimacy,” our most personal, most haunting, and most uproarious issue.
This article was originally delivered last week as a “microtalk” at the Game Developers Conference 2011. The format dictates that all speakers must also use 20 slides that auto-advance every 16 seconds! So if you dare, attempt to read the following in about five minutes.
